"Springsteen throws down a challenge no other superstar – or craven politician for that matter – has the vim, guts or gusto to even consider. That’s why it matters. And he does so with an album at No 1 in the Billboard charts, with five stars from Rolling Stone and lyrics like this: “Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well / Send the robber barons straight to hell / The greedy thieves that came around and ate the flesh of everything they’ve found / Whose crimes have gone unpunished now / Walk the streets as free men now."